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Thursday 13 April 2023
More red ink in the ledger re: Darwinism's simple beginning.
About That Genetic Code
We Recently looked at the enormous problems that the DNA, or genetic, code pose for evolutionary theory. Here is a paper that seems to have come to the same conclusion. The authors argue that the underlying patterns of the genetic code are not likely to be due to “chance coupled with presumable evolutionary pathways,” (P-value < 10^-13), and conclude that they are “essentially irreducible to any natural origin.”
A common response from evolutionists, when presented with evidence such as this, is that we still don’t understand biology very well. This argument from ignorance goes all the way back to Darwin. He used it in Chapter 6 of Origins to discard the problem of evolving the electric organs in fish, such as the electric eel (which isn’t actually an eel). The Sage from Kent agreed that it is “impossible to conceive by what steps these wondrous organs” evolved, but that was OK, because “we do not even know of what use they are.”
Setting aside the fact that Darwin’s argument from ignorance was a non-scientific fallacy, it also was a set up for failure. For now, a century and half later, we do know “what use they are.” And it has just gotten Worse for evolution.
Darwin’s argument has been demolished, once again demonstrating that arguments from ignorance, aside from being terrible arguments, are not good science.
The truth is, when evolutionists today claim that the many problems with their chance theory are due to a lack of knowledge, they are throwing up a smoke screen.
Yet more on when the thumb print of JEHOVAH is the logical conclusion.
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Wednesday 12 April 2023
The Ascension of the eighth king?
UN Seeks Vast New Powers for Global Emergencies
Lawmakers and critics are sounding the alarm, but the White House supports the agenda
The United Nations is seeking vast new powers and stronger “global governance” tools to deal with international emergencies such as pandemics and economic crises, a new U.N. policy brief has revealed, and the Biden administration appears to support the proposal.
The plan to create an “Emergency Platform,” which would involve a set of protocols activated during crises that could affect billions of people, has already drawn strong concern and criticism from U.S. policymakers and analysts.
Among those expressing concern is House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Texas), whose committee oversees U.S. foreign policy and involvement in international organizations.
“We must be sure that any global protocol or platform operated by the U.N. respects U.S. national sovereignty and U.S. taxpayer dollars,” McCaul told The Epoch Times.
He also noted his concern that the proposed platform expands the authority and funding of the U.N. and the definitions of “emergency” and “crisis” to include, for instance, climate change.
U.N. documents and statements released in March by key leaders of the global organization make clear that climate change is a major piece of the U.N. emergencies agenda.
Other critics who spoke with The Epoch Times expressed concern about the influence of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) within the U.N., the global organization’s well-documented corruption problems, and its track record of dealing with previous emergencies.
“Allowing the U.N. to deal with this is the equivalent of putting the CCP in charge of global emergencies,” former U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for International Organizations Kevin Moley told The Epoch Times.
In a policy brief dubbed “Our Common Agenda” headlined “Strengthening the International Response to Complex Shocks – An Emergency Platform,” U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres laid out his vision for empowering the global organization to deal with global crises.
“The challenges we face can only be addressed through stronger international cooperation,” Guterres declared, calling for “strengthening global governance” for current and future generations.
The policy brief builds on an earlier “Common Agenda” document and comes as U.N. leaders outline the plans for a “Summit of the Future” set to be held during the General Assembly’s annual high-level meeting in September.
If it gets a green light from member states, the global emergency protocols would be “triggered automatically” in case of a global crisis, “regardless of the type or nature of the crisis involved,” the U.N. chief said.
The protocols would bring all sorts of institutions together, including national governments, international institutions, and the private sector. Ultimately, all would have to recognize the “primary role of intergovernmental organs [such as U.N. agencies] in decision-making,” the document states.
“The Emergency Platform, once convened, would be a tool for the United Nations system to implement decisions taken by relevant organs,” according to the policy brief.
State Department Supportive
A spokesman for the U.S. State Department suggested that the Biden administration backs the plan.
“The administration has made clear its firm belief that U.S. national security is best served by engaging actively and comprehensively with the UN and other international organizations,” the spokesman told The Epoch Times in an e-mailed statement about the proposal.
“The U.N. is only as effective, transparent, and accountable as its membership demands, and the U.S. works tirelessly to ensure the U.N. meets those demands.”
The U.N. proposal was unveiled as multibillionaire Bill Gates, one of the most prominent voices during the COVID-19 crisis and a major financier of the World Health Organization (WHO) and vaccines, called for a global “fire department” to address international health emergencies.
Writing in The New York Times last month, Gates said a “Global Health Emergency Corps” could “spring into action at a moment’s notice when danger emerges.”
“The Global Health Emergency Corps will represent massive progress toward a pandemic-free future,” Gates wrote in the op-ed. “The question is whether we have the foresight to invest in that future now before it’s too late.”
UN Emergencies Protocol
Guterres, who is asking governments to approve his plan later this year, said risks are growing and becoming more complex.
“Enhanced international cooperation is the only way we can adequately respond to these shocks, and the United Nations is the only organization with the reach and legitimacy to convene at the highest level and galvanize global action,” he said. “We must keep strengthening the multilateral system so that it is fit to face the challenges of tomorrow.”
Exactly what would constitute an emergency that would trigger the U.N. emergency response wasn’t made clear.
However, the document states that crises without “global consequences” would “not necessarily” be categorized as an emergency requiring U.N. intervention. In other words, some crises that don’t have global consequences might trigger a U.N. response.
The report gives two examples of recent global crises that struck in the 21st century and that U.N. leaders believe support the case for coordinated global responses: the COVID-19 pandemic and the “cost of living crisis” of 2022.
Rather than offering specifics, the policy brief offers broad categories and types of emergencies that might activate the global protocols. These include climate or environmental events; environmental degradation; pandemics; accidental or deliberate release of biological agents; disruptions in the flow of goods, people, or finance; disruptions in cyberspace or “global digital connectivity;” a major event in “outer space;” and “unforeseen risks (‘black swan’ events).”
Frequently cited throughout the document is the global response to COVID-19. The U.N. chief, who famously led the Socialist International before taking his current post, said that a stronger and a more coordinated U.N. response would have resulted in more people receiving the COVID-19 vaccine.
WHO leaders’ ongoing efforts to strengthen the U.N. health agency with a new international pandemic treaty and changes to International Health Regulations are touted as key mechanisms for emergencies.
Upon activation of the emergency protocols, government leaders, U.N. agencies, international financial institutions, the private sector, civil society, and experts would all be convened by the U.N. to respond.
The U.N. secretary-general would decide when to activate the protocols. He would also identify all participants and oversee their contributions to the response, the policy brief explains. Contributions mentioned in the document include everything from providing money to changing government policy.
Agenda 2030 a Priority
Among the reasons for the urgency, the U.N. stated that international emergencies could undermine progress toward achieving the controversial Agenda 2030 Sustainable Development Goals, referred to by U.N. leaders as the “master plan for humanity.”
The 17 goals, which cover practically every area of life and have come under fire from critics, were signed by virtually all national governments in 2015, with strong support from the Obama administration and the CCP.
Although the U.S. Senate hasn’t ratified the global agreement as required for all treaties, it’s nonetheless being implemented worldwide, as policies in business and government are aligned with the agenda.
“Once a complex global shock occurs, a more timely, predictable, and effective international response could potentially mitigate some of the impacts on the Sustainable Development Goals and allow the process of recovery to start sooner,” the document states. “The proposal to agree on protocols to convene an Emergency Platform aims to achieve this.”
The impetus for the emergencies plan was a pledge by U.N. member states during the global organization’s 75th anniversary to strengthen “global governance.”
Other components of this strengthening—policies that parallel much of the “Great Reset” announced in 2020 by Guterres and others, such as Klaus Schwab, at the World Economic Forum—include a renewed “social contract.” The WEF is a “strategic partner” of the U.N. in implementing Agenda 2030, especially in terms of getting the private sector onboard globally.
The U.N. emergency-response plan was released in tandem with another report on “Our Common Future” calling for a new “Special Envoy for Future Generations,” the creation of a “Futures Lab,” dramatic shifts in policy toward what the U.N. calls “sustainable development,” and more.
The report calls for enshrining policies that U.N. leaders say will preserve the planet for the future, “at the global level, where some of the most consequential decisions for humanity are taken.”
Critics Point to CCP, Corruption, and COVID
One major concern surrounding the crisis-response proposal among U.S. leaders is the strong influence of the CCP within the U.N.—influence that was felt clearly during the pandemic and that CCP critics say could be even more dangerous in future global emergencies.
Moley, who served in key roles at the international level during multiple U.S. administrations, rejected the U.N. plan.
“This U.N. plan flies in the face of the experience we just had with the latest pandemic, which shows why we should reiterate sovereignty, not give more away,” he told The Epoch Times in a phone interview.
Moley, who oversaw the U.S. relationship with international organizations during his time in the Trump administration, has long sounded the alarm about the CCP’s surging influence within the U.N., a process he says has been supported by both the Obama and Biden administrations. He called it an existential threat to the United States.
The powerful influence of the CCP and its mostly “authoritarian” and “crony democracy” allies over the U.N. system represents a major danger when it comes to proposals to grant the global outfit more power, Moley said.
“As long as the controlling interests of the U.N. are in the hands of the CCP and aided and abetted by the G77 [an alliance of 134 governments including the CCP], this cannot be allowed,” he said.
As a result of the CCP’s well-documented control over key U.N. agencies and even its powerful influence over most member states, approving the emergencies protocol plan would be tantamount to putting the communist regime in charge of global crises, according to Moley.
Considering that the CCP is a “criminal conspiracy” more than a government and the fact that its agents now dominate vast swaths of the U.N., this is a “recipe for disaster,” he said.
“We need to look at anything sponsored by the U.N. with great skepticism. But unfortunately, our State Department—especially now—does not look at it skeptically. Instead, they look at the United States skeptically.”
Rather than going along with the U.N. plan, Moley called for completely revamping the U.S. State Department.
“It needs to be taken down to the ground floor,” he said, pointing to obstruction from career bureaucrats throughout Trump’s tenure.
“As long as the State Department remains as currently constituted, we do not have diplomats speaking for America, but for [billionaire financier George] Soros [and his] Open Society foundations, globalism, and all that does to undermine American sovereignty,” he said.
Another critic, international lawyer and former U.N. internal investigator-turned-whistleblower Peter Gallo, noted the organization’s long history of corruption, politicization, and scandal, including cases in which humanitarian aid was diverted or even weaponized for political purposes.
More alarming, though, is what Gallo described as the “sexual exploitation and human trafficking of victims of such disasters.”
“U.N. personnel have an egregious record of involvement in that exploitation themselves—and the organization has a shameful record of covering up allegations of sexual misconduct rather than properly investigating them,” Gallo said.
Gallo and other former U.N. officials, using U.N. data, estimate that more than 60,000 women and children were raped and sexually abused by U.N. personnel during the decade-long tenure of Ban Ki-moon, the previous secretary-general. Gallo said he believes that is a “very conservative estimate.”
“There is no evidence of anything being any better under António Guterres,” Gallo added, citing impunity for perpetrators and attacks on the U.N. whistleblowers who have tried to stop it.
Considering all that, Gallo suggested that it’s a mistake for governments to consider trusting the U.N. with even more power to oversee emergency responses.
Disputed Claims
Investigative journalist and WHO expert James Roguski, meanwhile, blasted the U.N. and contested many of the claims made in its policy brief on emergency protocols.
For instance, Roguski ridiculed the implication that Africans suffered from not receiving enough COVID-19 vaccines from the West.
“In reality, 16 times as many deaths per capita were attributed to COVID in North and South America and Europe when compared to Africa,” he told The Epoch Times, citing WHO data while calling the U.N. claims a “blatant lie.” Roguski gained national prominence for his reporting on the WHO’s plans to consolidate power over global health matters.
“In my humble opinion, the globalist organizations have failed to learn a great number of very important lessons during the past three-plus years,” he said.
Pointing to COVID-19 policies championed by the WHO and other U.N. agencies that he said were detrimental and, in some cases, “undeniably harmful and deadly,” Roguski called for a different approach.
“They have failed to learn that centralized control performed far worse than individualized and creative health treatments that saved tens of thousands of lives,” he said.
“We the People need to push back against the relentless push for centralized, bureaucratic control that the globalists offer as the solution to the world’s problems. We need to stand up and speak up in support of individual freedoms and national sovereignty.”
U.N. Secretary-General Guterres and his spokesman, Stéphane Dujarric, didn’t respond by press time to a request from The Epoch Times for comment.
A complex beginning?
Breakthroughs Unveil Evidence of Foresight in Nature
Editor’s note: We are delighted to present a series of excerpts from chapters in the recent book, Science and Faith in Dialogue, edited by Frederik van Niekerk and Nico Vorster. You can download a full copy of the book for free by going Here.
Advances in multiple scientific disciplines have identified in nature evidence that a mind designed the laws of nature, our planetary system, and life. Nature demonstrates foresight where ingenious solutions were devised to confront problems and challenges related to sustaining and propagating life. Examples include the cell membrane, the genetic code, bacteria acting as ecosystem engineers, bird navigation, water and our planet. This evidence points not to life resulting from blind, undirected processes but to every aspect of nature being designed by an intelligent agent.
Biology is amid a gold rush of discovery. At my previous academic institution, the University of Campinas in São Paulo, Brazil, I ran the Thomson Mass Spectrometry Laboratory for 25 years. There, my team and I delved into many areas of chemistry, biochemistry, and medical science that until recently were still too new to have names — everything from proteomics, lipidomics, and mass spectrometry imaging to petroleomics and bacteria fingerprinting.
Breakthrough Technologies and Techniques
My research, along with my role as president of the Brazilian Mass Spectrometry Society and the International Mass Spectrometry Foundation, have brought me into contact with other leading researchers in Brazil and around the globe. And when we come together at conferences, the excitement is tremendous. Due to a cluster of breakthrough technologies and techniques, almost every week reveals some new wonder in the biological realm.
Some of these discoveries yield new medicines or medical techniques, such as the abundantly awarded cancer pen recently developed by my daughter, Livia Eberlin. Others give engineers new ideas for inventions in the burgeoning field of biomimetics. Still others have no immediate practical application; they are just revelations of beautiful biological ingenuity — scientific discovery for its own sake.
All of this new knowledge is exhilarating in its own right. At the same time, I am now convinced that many of these discoveries, taken together, point beyond themselves to something even more extraordinary. This new age of discovery is revealing a myriad of artful solutions to major engineering challenges, solutions that for all of us appear to require something that matter alone lacks. I will put this as plainly as I can: This rush of discovery seems to point beyond any purely blind evolutionary process to the workings of an attribute unique to minds — foresight!
And Yes, I Know
And yes, I know. We are told that it is out of bounds for science to go there. But regardless of where you ultimately land on the question of what conclusions science should or should not allow and whether or not you ultimately affirm that this gold rush of new evidence points to the workings of foresight, I urge you to inspect the evidence. Curiosity may have killed the cat, but it has done wonders for the scientific enterprise.
The many and ingenious examples uncovered in recent years are so numerous they could fill many large volumes. The pages that follow highlight only a small fraction of the total. But that fraction is filled with marvels. We will look at the cell membrane, the genetic code, bacteria that act as ecosystem engineers, avian navigation, water and our planet.
Life thrives in our diverse planetary environment, due in no small part to the many ways Earth is fine-tuned for life. But Earth can also be extremely hostile to life. The oxygen molecule (O2) is, for instance, essential to life, but only a life form that can efficiently wrap and transport the “devil” O2 exactly to a place where it can be used as an energy source would benefit from its angelic side. Otherwise, O2 becomes life’s greatest enemy.
Rupture the membrane of a living cell, exposing it to the air, and you will see the great damage O2 and a myriad of other chemical invaders can do to a perforated cell. Death would be swift and sure. From an engineering standpoint, then, it was essential that a way be found to protect the cell, life’s most basic unit. The solution was clever: the cell was surrounded by a strong chemical shield from the very beginning.
Read the rest by downloading a free copy of Science and Faith in Dialogue Here
Social media is grim dark?
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Tuesday 11 April 2023
When the thumb print of JEHOVAH is the logical conclusion.
Debate About the God Hypothesis: An Overview with Stephen Meyer
Stephen Meyer’s Return of the God Hypothesis is out now in paperback with a new epilogue by Dr. Meyer responding to critics. See the book’s website for more information and resources. For the occasion, we’re highlighting some of the best interviews Meyer has done about the book. In this episode of Great Minds with radio host Michael Medved, Dr. Meyer gives an overview of the debate and explains why he wrote the book.
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On separating Church from state.
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Rise of the "Christian" Taliban?
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Ps. There is also an equally radical "Christian" left on the march but it and its danger to civil liberty gets precious little mention from the left leaning mainstream media and its cohorts in academia.
The theory of devolution is on the march?
Even More Mammoth Devolution
Last year I reported1 on a paper2 that showed 87 genes were broken in genomes of recovered extinct woolly mammoth remains, compared to their modern elephant relatives. The authors of the paper noted previous research had shown that “gene losses … can be adaptive” and thought that was the case for the mammoths they studied, too. I pointed out that, while such a process might indeed aid adaptation of a species to its changing environment, nonetheless it constitutes de-volution, not e-volution, in the sense that the species is losing genetic information, not gaining it.
A new paper strongly bolsters that conclusion.3 In “Genomics of adaptive evolution in the woolly mammoth” a large international team of researchers sequenced genomes from 23 woolly mammoth remains and examined genes for proteins that had the most “fixed” amino acid mutations (that is, mutations that occurred in all of the genomes that were sequenced, and so very probably were widely present in the mammoth population). They evaluated the mutations by something called an “aggregated SIFT score.” SIFT stands for “Sorting Intolerant From Tolerant.”4 In the paper, the higher the aggregated SIFT score, the more likely the amino acid mutations were to not be tolerated by the protein’s structure — that is, to disrupt the protein’s activity. Of the 31 most highly mutated genes (Table S5), the great majority had high aggregated SIFT scores for the number of mutations they carried, and 21 of the genes each contained one or more “high impact” mutations (very likely to disrupt structure). Only four genes had low aggregated SIFT scores. (Interestingly, one of those is the BRCA2 gene, whose mutation in humans can lead to breast cancer.)
Revisiting Darwin Devolves
This seems like a good time to reiterate what I wrote in Darwin Devolves in 2019:5
Thus, although these are difficult matters to test directly, and although the more widely two species are separated in time the harder it is to interpret changes, it seems very likely that degradative modification-of-function and loss-of-FCT mutations drove much of mammoth evolution. If so, then not only do beneficial-degrading changes explain modern evolution from bacteria to bears, but also the evolution of now-extinct species that arose millions of years in the past.
The blazingly obvious lesson from woolly mammoth studies and many other ones, too, is that it is much faster and easier to break or blunt a gene than to improve or make a new one. Thus, if a helpful effect can be had by degrading or destroying genetic information, the blind watchmaker will toss it out in an evolutionary instant, well before any constructive mutations meander onto the scene. That’s certainly not the kind of process that would be expected to build complex machinery in the first place.
Notes
1.https://evolutionnews.org/2022/08/mammoth-support-for-devolution/
2.Van der Valk, Tom, et al. 2022. Evolutionary consequences of genomic deletions and insertions in the woolly mammoth genome. iScience 25, 104826.
3.DÃez-del-Molino, D. et al. 2023. Genomics of adaptive evolution in the woolly mammoth. Current Biology, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2023.03.084.
4.Ng, P.C. and Henikoff, S. 2003. SIFT: predicting amino acid changes that affect protein function. Nucleic Acids Research 31: 3812–3814.
5.Behe, M. J. 2019. Darwin Devolves: The New Science about DNA that Challenges Evolution. New York, NY, HarperOne, p. 196.
The second horseman's ride along the banks of the Nile.
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Buyer's remorse?
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Monday 10 April 2023
One more tradeoff?
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In search of the bright line between artificial and natural selection.
There Was Berra’s Blunder; Now Lieberman’s Lapse
Ohio State biologist Tim Berra thought evolutionary progress was like the diversification seen in Corvette models. Now, another evolutionist makes an analogy for extinction. But can the “extinction” of the steam locomotive really bring understanding to Darwinian theory?
Back in 1997, Phillip Johnson had fun with Tim Berra’s notion that biological evolution was like Corvette evolution (see his quips recounted by Casey Luskin Here , and later instances of similar blunders Here and Here). He called it “Berra’s Blunder” because, like Darwin, Berra had confused intelligently directed processes with natural selection — Darwin, with animal breeding; Berra, with engineering. This is not to accuse either man of being completely unaware of the differences, but of trying to score points for natural selection theory with obviously flawed analogies.
Today’s “inverted Berra blunder” concerns extinction. Is the analogy just as flawed, or does it lead to increased understanding of the ebb and flow of biological life? The fact of extinction is empirically verified by fossils. It is not controversial in the way Darwinian progress up the tree of life is. What if the new claim overturns a Darwinian assumption about the extinction of species? Can the analogy be embraced by ID supporters?
Lieberman’s Lapse
Bruce Lieberman, a professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of Kansas and a curator of the school’s Natural History Museum, was featured in news from KU about his epiphany. Perhaps it was triggered by a song.
When the Kinks’ Ray Davies penned the tune “Last of the Steam-Powered Trains,” the vanishing locomotives stood as nostalgic symbols of a simpler English life. But for a paleontologist at the University of Kansas, the replacement of steam-powered trains with diesel and electric engines, as well as cars and trucks, might be a model of how some species in the fossil record died out.
Lieberman thought about how diesel and electric engines rendered the old steam locomotives obsolete. A simple understanding of the history might lead one to conclude that the newer engines outcompeted the steam engine, and that’s why steam engines went extinct. Except for a few remaining antiques operated for railroad museums and vacation rides in the mountains, steam locomotives are rarely seen today. They just can’t compete with the faster, cleaner, cheaper, more powerful modern engines. Lieberman thought and he thought, and the light bulb went on: This could be a way to test the popular theory called “competitive exclusion” used by evolutionists to explain the extinction of biological species.
“There’s always been a bias to assume in the scientific community that competition is sort of the fundamental force that drives evolution and plays the biggest role on extinction,” Lieberman said. “That idea comes from a lot of different areas of research, including on the fossil record. But we, as paleontologists, have to dive down deeper into the data and analyze them.”
It Seems an Honorable Quest
Don’t scientists want to debunk poor assumptions, overcome biases, and understand why things happen? Is competition a different kind of force when it comes to extinction than it is when Darwinists offer it up to explain innovation?
“I’d always been fascinated by steam engines because they’re the technological equivalent of dinosaurs,” Lieberman said. “They’re gigantic. We infer dinosaurs made a lot of noise. We know that steam locomotives made a lot of noise, but they’re no longer with us.”
Now that comparison sounds stretched, but let’s hear him out. Searching through a steam train database for examples, Lieberman and colleague Luke Strotz found evidence against the competitive exclusion model. Sure, there was competition at first. It looked like the newer engines were robbing steam locomotives of their ecological niche. A closer look, though, showed that competition only excludes an older technology when there is direct overlap for the same space.
“For a time when there’s no competitors to steam-locomotive technology, we see them almost diversify and diffuse into no particular direction,” Lieberman said. “But when these new locomotives appear, we see a profound shift to really active natural selection and adaptation of the steam locomotive. Often, it’s thought that adaptation is a good sign for a group. But what we would argue is, in fact, when things start to adapt and shift directionally — traditionally in evolution that’s not a good time for a group. We’d argue it’s a sign the group may be experiencing duress or pressure from other things.”
There’s the first sign of trouble with the analogy: Lieberman and Strotz are comparing the fates of engineered technologies with natural selection. Can they transfer the analogy to biology? In their paper, they make three comparisons of steam engine history with biological extinction.
In some cases, the idea that competitive exclusion was at play has been debunked; in other examples, evidence of competitive exclusion falls far short compared with the meticulous data available on the demise of steam engines.
“One of the classic examples involved mammals and non-flying dinosaurs, where the traditional view was, ‘Hey, the mammals were smarter and quicker and they dropped these dinosaurs to extinction,’” he said. “Now we know that it was a giant rock that fell out of the sky that caused this tremendous environmental damage, and bigger things are more likely to be susceptible to that.
This point, too, seems stretched and factually incorrect. Not all dinosaurs were big, but they all perished, while frogs and butterflies survived.
A Major Insight into Evolution?
In their paper in the journal Royal Society Open Science, Lieberman and Strotz list four criteria for a locomotive to be competitive in the transportation market. Then they justify the analogy for biological evolution, with some caveats. For example, they know that steam locomotives (SLs) are not truly extinct; there are a few still operating in various locations. But even with their caveats, they are adamant that they have hit on a major insight into the process of biological evolution.
While we provide evidence that SLs adhere to our four criteria, we do not propose that a technological entity can be considered truly homologous with a macroevolutionary unit. For instance, SLs cannot be considered monophyletic and they are incapable of speciation. We do consider them strongly analogous, however, as they do experience both ‘birth’ and ‘death’, and are subject to processes that fall within the purview of macroecology. In this sense, technological entities can be considered parallel to higher biological units, such as genera and above. Although the functional lifespan of the SL is several orders of magnitude shorter than typical macroevolutionary units, the rapid generation time of new locomotive forms (measured on a scale of months/years) means SLs can be considered comparable to a ‘temporally condensed’ macroevolutionary unit.
Just as Bad as Berra’s Blunder
I’m sure most of our readers do not need an explanation of why this analogy is just as bad as Berra’s Blunder, so the summary here can be brief. Locomotives are designed by engineers with minds and knowledge of physics! Trains don’t have babies! They neither “emerge” by blind processes of nature, nor do they go extinct without reasoned decisions made by the intelligent minds of businessmen. This is crazy.
If it weren’t for the sad reality that Darwinism lives in university echo chambers without critical thinkers to object, Lieberman’s Lapse would have gone extinct itself before getting published. And extinct it would have gone not by natural blind processes nor by competitive exclusion, but by reasoned debate among thinking people who understand the difference between what minds can do and what chance does. This isolation from critique fosters loco motives for fantasizing.
Lieberman’s Lapse is actually worse than Berra’s Blunder, because Lieberman and Strotz think their “insight” has broad application to all of evolution, including macroevolution. We’ll let their own words provide the evidence that this was an exercise in futility on their part, ending with the customary Darwinian promissory notes for some “understanding” that never arrives at the dock.
It should also be noted that the relevant data needed to conduct a full assessment of both the frequency of our proposed model in the fossil record and the relative import of clade replacement in macroevolutionary dynamics is currently lacking, as the necessary functional trait data associated with putative examples of competition-driven extinction has not yet been compiled. The fossil record does, however, contain a plethora of suitable options from which such data could be obtained.
Our results thus cannot, at this time, resolve what role, if any, competition plays in driving extinction at the macroevolutionary scale. They do, however, provide a path forward that may serve to resolve the issue by addressing the existing impasse in identifying causal relationships in fossil time series. There is no doubt that the SL was derailed by its competitors; however, it still remains to be established if biological clades are frequently similarly sidetracked.
Sidetracked? This analogy has derailed and flipped over, spilling toxic chemicals in fantasyland.
False messiahs ?
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My two cents on the JEHOVAH must be be triune to be perfect argument
A union of three imperfect divinities cannot constitute a perfect trinity. Therefore each member of our perfect trinity must himself be a trinity if we are to take this reasoning to its logical conclusion ,and of course each member of the perfect trinities constituting the perfect trinity must themselves be perfect trinities and so on ad nauseum .
We are all X-Men?
A Single Mutation Makes Humans
When evolutionists found out that the chimp and human genomes were practically identical they went ape, claiming the evidence all but proved our shared lineage, with the chimp, to a small, primitive, ancestral primate. There was only one problem: With so few random genetic changes, how would such dramatic and complex changes come about? Far from a confirmation, our similar genes posed a dilemma for evolution. For how could so little genetic change cause so much significant evolutionary distance be traversed? And if the answer is, as it always seems to be, that those rare and random genetic changes were able to achieve such monumental results because the requisite parts and pieces that would be used were, fortuitously, already in place (because they just happened to have evolved for some other reason), then we have entered the realm of just-so stories. For the theory then amounts to the claim that “the fix was in.” The various key ingredients to making a human were all there, lying around, perhaps in disguise, or perhaps doing some other job. And then they were systematically recruited, coming into their own by virtue of a few, rare, mutations finally occurring and enabling the puzzle pieces to come together. It would be like a supersonic jet aircraft just happening to come together because its various parts just luckily were lying around. That is serendipity on steroids.
Well it just gets worse. More recently evolutionists were forced to conclude that most of the mutations affecting protein-coding genes led to “neutral and slightly deleterious alleles.” So not only are evolution’s random mutation resources meager, but even worse, those mutations mostly led to “neutral and slightly deleterious alleles.”
In fact the beneficial mutations in protein-coding genes, which presumably would be important in evolving the human from a small, primitive ape, literally number only in the hundreds. It would be astonishing if the human could be evolved from so few mutations.
In fact the beneficial mutations in protein-coding genes, which presumably would be important in evolving the human from a small, primitive ape, literally number only in the hundreds. It would be astonishing if the human could be evolved from so few mutations.
But again, it just gets worse. For now evolutionists must conclude that not only are there few random mutations that must somehow create Newton and Einstein (to name just a couple of humans), and not only are most of those mutations neutral or slightly deleterious, and not only would evolution probably have only a few hundred genes undergoing selection, but that a monumental part of that evolutionary change, so important in creating humans, must have arisen from, yes, a single mutation. To wit:
What distinguishes humans from monkeys and apes? The gene ARHGAP11B is probably among the things that make humans special: This gene is only present in humans and contributes to the amplification of brain stem cells. Researchers at the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics in Dresden have now made a spectacular finding: It is a single base pair substitution in the ARHGAP11B gene that ultimately is responsible for the ability of the ARHGAP11B protein to amplify brain stem cells, a process thought to underlie the expansion of the neocortex in modern humans.
Spectacular indeed. As one of the researchers explained:
This change is tiny on a genomic scale but substantial in its functional and evolutionary consequences – it’s a single base substitution that likely drove brain size evolution and that may have set the stage for what makes humans special.
A single mutation? Here we have evolution reductio ad absurdum. A single mutation essentially worked the magic to create humans. How lucky we are.
Of course such absurdity entails the idea that an army of molecular components were serendipitously in place, ready and waiting for the single mutation to unleash their creative powers.
Sunday 9 April 2023
When your only tool is an eraser?
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Darwin of the gaps?
Current Biology: RNA-Only Life Coming Soon
Here is a trade secret: Evolutionists acknowledge scientific problems only after they find solutions. We have seen this repeatedly. Evolutionists evade the science, and ridicule their critics, only later to confess readily that the problem was real. The difference is they have found what they think is a solution to the problem they once so steadfastly denied. To wit, our latest example comes from Michael Gross’s recent article in Current Biology on the RNA world praising the progress made in developing the on-again / off-again RNA World hypothesis. Gross is sufficiently confident that the hypothesis is “on-again” that he can now agree with critics that the origin of life was once a big problem:
Just how the transition from non-life to life may have happened was indeed a gaping hole in our understanding of evolution in the 20th century, which a few inspired experiments like Stanley Miller’s famous 1952 primordial soup kitchen couldn’t quite bridge.
Indeed a gaping hole? Couldn’t quite bridge?
You would never know this from the evolutionist’s rosy assessments, and ridicule of anyone suggesting the science indicated otherwise. As Carl Zimmer wrote more than 15 years ago, scientists “have found compelling evidence that life could have evolved into a DNA-based microbe in a series of steps.” Perhaps he had read the National Academy of Science’s 1999 claim that
For those who are studying the origin of life, the question is no longer whether life could have originated by chemical processes involving nonbiological components. The question instead has become which of many pathways might have been followed to produce the first cells? [1]
Of course for the Mother of all such absurd, non scientific, statements we can go back to Alexander Oparin’s 1924 prediction that origin of life research would be solved “very, very soon.”
But now, almost a century after Oparin’s slightly premature forecast, the evolutionists feel they have finally arrived. And so now Gross can admit to what we have been inconveniently pointing out all along: There has been “a gaping hole in our understanding of evolution.”
Evolutionists can finally admit to this because they are rather confident that they are on the cusp of a profound break-through: A compelling demonstration of the feasibility of the origin and operation of RNA-based life. That is, the RNA World hypothesis:
it appears conceivable that a working model of RNA-only life could be synthesized soon.
At least Gross did not say “very, very soon.” Nonetheless, we think evolutionists are, yet again, speaking a bit prematurely.
That, however, is neither here nor there. For our purposes what is important about Gross’ article is not his proclamation of imminent success—which until it actually happens carries no more weight than the boatload of other failed evolutionary expectations—but rather the delayed admission of “a gaping hole in our understanding of evolution.”
Now that we have that cleared up, we can apparently all agree that until the RNA World, or some other miracle breakthrough, is demonstrated, evolutionary theory has “a gaping hole.” That’s progress.
Saturday 8 April 2023
What cosmic speed limit?
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Complications re:Darwinism's "simple beginning"
James Tour on Origin-of-Life Dealbreakers
On a new episode of ID the Future, distinguished synthetic organic chemist James Tour of Rice University explains why the goal of synthesizing life from non-life in conditions similar to those of the early Earth appears further away than ever. It’s not an illusion, he explains. The illusion was how close OOL researchers thought they were 50-70 years ago. They were never close, and the more we learn about how mind-bogglingly sophisticated even the simplest cells are, and how the complexity is essential for biological life, the more we realize just how far we are from constructing a plausible scenario for the mindless origin of the first life.
Tour points out that even granting a great deal of intelligent design in the form of the highly skilled and interventionist work of the origin-of-life researchers in the lab, they still can’t engineer into existence all the key building blocks of a living cell. What if you handed them all the building blocks in the right proportions? They’re still nowhere near being able to intelligently design those ingredients into a living cell, Tour says. It has to do with what’s termed the interactome — that is, all the interdependent molecular interactions in a particular cell, many of which may initially appear unimportant but turn out to be crucial.
Tour doesn’t argue that researchers will never be able to design a cell from non-living matter. He does say that if it is achieved, it will be well into the future. What will such an achievement underscore? As host Casey Luskin emphasizes, it will highlight the creative power of intelligent agency.
Friday 7 April 2023
Yet one more rant on the utter absurdity of Christendom's Trinity dogma.
Imagine a book with three Chapters,the subject of each chapter is a complete up to the moment understanding Chemistry. That's right if one diligently studies any of the three chapters of our hypothetical book he would become an expert on the subject of chemistry. Also having studied any of the three chapters none of the remaining chapters could contribute any further understanding of the aforesaid subject to our reader .
Let's say that this book alone contained this up to the moment understanding of chemistry.
If all of these premises be accepted as true, how could the claim that that any particular chapter of this book is necessary re: a complete understanding of chemistry be taken seriously?
Would this book in its entirety be any more valuable re: an up to the moment knowledge of chemistry than any of its chapters?
Would any worthwhile refutation be possible of the observation that this book is a couple of chapters too long?
More cause for despair re:Darwinism's "simple beginning"
Do Present Proposals on Chemical Evolutionary Mechanisms Point Toward the First Life?
Editor’s note: We are delighted to present a series of excerpts from chapters in the recent book, Science and Faith in Dialogue, edited by Frederik van Niekerk and Nico Vorster. You can download a full copy of the book for free by going here
Abiogenesis is the prebiotic process wherein life, such as a cell, arises from non-living materials such as simple organic compounds. Long before evolution could even begin, the origin of the first life, that first cell, would have arisen from some simpler non-living molecules. On Earth, the essential molecules for life as we know it are carbohydrates (also called sugars or saccharides), nucleic acids, lipids, and proteins (polymers of amino acids). Described in this chapter is the process by which organic synthesis is performed and the considerations that are generally required to synthesize a complex system where many molecular parts come together to operate concertedly. This will be demonstrated in the synthesis of nanomachines.
Then some proposals that others have espoused for the synthesis of carbohydrates and carbohydrate- bearing nucleotide bases will be considered, from a prebiotic milieu. The obstacles to the much more difficult task of having the molecular building blocks assemble into a functional system will be briefly mentioned. The scientifically unknown entities that have been proposed to have seeded life on Earth, such as a design agent or panspermia, are not considered. An opinion showing that the strongest evidence against the proposals of current prebiotic research is the researchers’ own data will be rendered. The current proposals can prevent the discovery of scientific solutions in the field as they seem to be directing researchers down paths of futility despite hyperbolic claims to the contrary.
Paths of Futility
Any account of the origin of the first form of life must include a mechanism for the generation of the chemicals needed for life and then for how life arose from those pre-existing non-living chemicals. Abiogenesis proposals attempt to explain how chemical processes transformed pre-existing non-living chemicals into more complex information-bearing molecules such as DNA, RNA, and proteins. For an account of the origin of life to be realistic, there must be chemical processes that can successfully arrange simple organic compounds into complex biologically relevant macromolecules and living cells. Life requires carbohydrates, nucleic acids, lipids, and proteins. But what is the chemistry behind their origin? What is the origin of metabolism, or of the information-storage and processing systems that depend on these complex biochemical compounds?
Working in synthetic chemistry, building relatively simple nanomachines, has led to being sceptical of proposals for the origin of the requisite chemical building blocks necessary for life. Some biologists seem to think that there are well-understood prebiotic molecular mechanisms for the synthesis of carbohydrates, proteins, lipids, or nucleic acids. They have been grossly misinformed. Others think that, if not yet known, such chemical pathways will soon be identified. To me, these biologists are naively optimistic. What they hope for will not happen anytime soon.
And no wonder: few biologists have ever synthesized a complex molecule ab initio. Experience with organic synthesis leads to suggesting that chemistry acting on its own simply does not do what it would need to do to generate the biologically relevant macromolecules, let alone the complex nanosystems in a living cell. The reasons for this skepticism are further explained in more detail.
Lessons from Synthetic Chemistry
The process of molecular design and synthesis in general, what it takes to successfully build a molecule to perform a particular function, is discussed at the start. The initial design is important. Sometimes molecular designs are computer-assisted, but more often than not, the initial steps are noted on paper. A target must first be drawn or otherwise designated. This is no trivial task. In some cases, chemists have seen the target in a related system; in other cases, they guess the target’s properties on the basis of its molecular weight, its shape, the moieties appended to the main backbone and its functional capacities.
Once a target is selected, retrosynthesis is next, whether on paper or on a computer screen. Placing the target at the top, the chemist draws an inverted tree (or graph), one step down at a time, into multiple branch points, until a level where starting materials are at hand is reached. The inverted tree is then pruned. Certain branches lead to dead-ends. They are lopped off. Further refinement of various routes leads to a set of desired paths; these are the routes that can be attempted in the laboratory.
A Target and a Path
Given a target and a path to get there, the synthetic chemist must now try a number of chemical permutations. Each step may need to be optimized, and each step must be considered with respect to specific reaction site modifications and different reaction rates.
What is desired is often ever so slightly different in structure from what is not. If Product A is a mirror image of Product B, one left-handed and the other right-handed, separation becomes a time-consuming and challenging task, one requiring complementary mirror-image structures. Many molecules in natural biological systems are homochiral, meaning only left-handed or right-handed molecules are used, not both. Their mirror images cannot do their work. In addition, few reactions ever afford a 100 percent yield; few reactions are free of deleterious by-products. Purification is essential. If by-products are left in the reaction, they result in complex mixtures that render further reactions impossible to execute correctly.
After purification, a number of different spectroscopic and spectrometric methods must be used to confirm the resulting molecular structures. In case the wrong molecular intermediate is made, the synthetic chemist quickly learns, and all subsequent steps are compromised.
Finally, intermediate products are often unstable in air, sunlight or room light, or water. Synthetic chemists must work in seconds or minutes to prevent destructive natural processes or chemical reactions from taking over.
Read the rest by downloading a free copy of Science and Faith in Dialogue here
Another look at the king of the planets.
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The James Webb Chronicles.
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Why JEHOVAH'S law demands that Jesus Christ be sinless man and not God-man
1Corinthians15:17NIV"And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins. "
So the above verse clearly states that if the PERSON identified as Christ Jesus in scripture did not truly die and was not truly resurrected no redemption from sin would be possible.
If the person identified as Jesus Christ in scripture is the uncreated only true God he cannot also be a creature according to scripture, indeed he cannot even resemble any created object, according to scripture.
Romans ch.1:22,23NIV"Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools 23and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like a mortal human being and birds and animals and reptiles."
It is stupid,according to JEHOVAH'S word, to even think that JEHOVAH would outwardly resemble a man to say nothing of being fully human
More to the point if the person called Jesus in scripture was the uncreated God of scripture he would not be subject to death
Psalms ch.90:2NIV"Before the mountains were born
or you brought forth the whole world,
from everlasting to everlasting you are God."
1Timothy ch.1:17NIV"Now to the King eternal, immortal, invisible, the only God, be honor and glory for ever and ever. Amen."
The Lord JEHOVAH was always ,is always ,will always be immortal.
According to scripture,hence can never die and thus can never be resurrected.
No wonder then that the scriptures tell us:
1Corinthians ch.15:21NIV"For since death came through a man(not God-man), the resurrection of the dead comes also through a man(not God-man)."
Thursday 6 April 2023
Anthropomorphized Darwinism?
About Those Placental Regulatory Genes
Last time we noted the teleological ideas and language used to describe the hypothetical evolution of several genes that are expressed for a mere few hours, in the early development stages of many placental mammals. And by early we mean when we consist of only 8-16 cells. The teleology is not a mere slip-up. As we have documented many times, it is a common thread running throughout the genre of evolutionary literature. It is needed to make sense of the data, because evolution doesn’t.
That teleological language appeared in an article about the research. Not too surprisingly, teleological language also appears in the research journal paper as well. To wit:
A small number of lineage-specific tandem gene duplications have occurred, and these raise questions concerning how evolutionarily young homeobox genes are recruited to new regulatory roles. For example, divergent tandem duplicates of the Hox3 gene have been recruited for extra-embryonic membrane specification and patterning in dipteran and lepidopteran insects, a large expansion of the Rhox homeobox gene family is deployed in reproductive tissues of mouse, and duplicates of TALE class genes are expressed in early development of molluscs.
Two of the evolutionists’ favorite words are “recruited” and “deployed.” They sound so active. What better way to obviate the rather awkward problem that, if evolution is true, all biological variation must be random with respect to fitness (a claim which, by the way, has been falsified so many times we stopped counting). Evolutionists nonetheless continue to spread this fake news.
And no teleological idea would be complete with the mandatory infinitive form (“for … specification and patterning”)
Politics and nationalism are just false Gods.
Revelation ch.13:4NIV"People worshiped the dragon because he had given authority to the beast, and they also worshiped the beast and asked, “Who is like the beast? Who can wage war against it?”"
Revelation ch.13:4NIV"ALL inhabitants of the earth (not a mere handful of "deluded cultists") will worship the beast—all whose names have not been written in the Lamb’s book of life, the Lamb who was slain from the creation of the world. "
Politics and nationalism are Just other false Gods.
Revelation ch.3:6NIV"Whoever has ears, let them hear what the Spirit says to the churches."
What is meant by 'Son of God'?
Acts17:28KJV"For in him we live, and move, and have our being; as certain also of your own poets have said, For we are also his offspring. (or he is our Father)"
Luke 3:38NIV"the son of Enosh, the son of Seth, the son of Adam, the son of God."
John 6:57NKJV "57As the living Father sent Me, and I live because of the Father(i.e the Father caused me to live), so(in the same manner) he who feeds on Me will live because of Me."
Luke 1:35NKJV"The angel answered, “The Holy Spirit will come on you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the holy one to be born will be called the Son of God."
Acts13:33NKJV"God has fulfilled this for us their children, in that He has raised up Jesus. As it is also written in the second Psalm:
‘You are My Son,
Today I have begotten You.’" note please that JEHOVAH'S restoring of his Son's life is spoken of as his begetting him anew.
Proverbs8:22NJB"Yahweh created me, first-fruits of his fashioning, before the oldest of his works."
To be clear JEHOVAH'S Wisdom is eternal hence uncreated like its possessor. Thus the passage speaks of the initial expression of this wisdom and not the wisdom itself.
Proverbs8:30NJB"I was beside the master craftsman, delighting him day after day, ever at play in his presence,"
Then this living derivative of JEHOVAH'S Wisdom proceeds to glorify its source by doing praiseworthy work.
Colossians1:15_16NJB"He is the image of the unseen God, the first-born of all creation,
16 for in him were created all things in heaven and on earth: everything visible and everything invisible, thrones, ruling forces, sovereignties, powers -- all things were created through him and for him."
1Corinthians1:24NIV"but to those whom God has called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God."
He is called logos one of the meanings of which is logic. He is JEHOVAH'S living rebuttal to those who accuse him of being a poor Father. He can only serve this purpose If he is truly a Son i.e owes his life/existence to his Father.
The supremacy of the Father permeates he scriptures II
John8:54NIV"If I glorify myself ,my glory means nothing. My Father,is the ONE who glorifies me." Once more Jesus identifies his Father as the one God of Israel. For Jesus and his fellow Jews the Father and the God were identical,the father was not a member of a collective deity. And can we even conceive of the Father claiming that if he glorified himself his glory would be nothing.(btw why is the Holy Spirit not glorifying him)
John:6NIV"I am the way the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me." Here again we see that the Father and the God are the same person. Unless we wish to claim that Jesus is merely mediator between man and a subsisting member of the God. Also if all members of this Godhead are truly co-equal why is it that only the Father requires a mediator and the Son and the spirit don't.
John ch.14:28"You heard me say,"I am going away and am coming back to you." If you loved me, you would be glad that I am going to the Father,for the Father (the God) is greater than I" The Son's plain declaration that the person identified as the Father is greater than the person identified as the Son really ought to be the end of the matter,unfortunately we have had to witness the most cringe inducing mental gymnastics in connection with this text.
Hebrews ch.6:13NIV"When (the)God made his (third person singular)promise to Abraham since there was no one greater for him to swear by.." God is immutable, so the apostle's declaration holds true at all times and in all places.
John ch.6:57NIV"Just as (in the same manner that) the living Father sent me and I live because of the Father (or the Father caused me to live),so (or in like manner) the one who feeds on me will live because of me." If someone else caused one to live then one is most certainly not the one God of scripture. And the comparison with the way Christ will resurrect faithful followers should be a safeguard against attempts to needlessly mystify the verse. But who caused the Son to live The Father (i.e the God).
Luke ch.18:19NIV""why do you call me good" Jesus answered" no one is good_except (the)God alone."" Here is another verse that really ought to be as plain as day as to its meaning ,but regarding which Christendom's theologians have elected for the most appalling mental contortions rather than the plain reading of the text. The Father is good in a way that distinguishes him from even the very best of his Sons. And this distinction is a transcendent one.
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